The north-west Europe (NWE) region has approximately 100 000 landfill (LF) sites. Most of these sites lack state-of-the-art environmental protection systems, leading to local pollution, land-use restrictions and global impacts. However, this problem can be transformed into an opportunity, as large volumes of resources (materials, energy and land area) in these LFs can be recovered through landfill mining (LFM). In order for LFM to be widely implemented in the NWE region RAWFILL tackles the remaining barriers, including the profitability risk due to the lack of reliable data on the recovery potential of LFs. Even in the NWE region, inventories of the 100 000 LFs lack relevant data on economic potential. Furthermore, traditional exploration methods are rather expensive, as they require analysis of multiple excavated waste samples.

Partners

The impact of RAWFILL is guaranteed by long-term involvement of all RAWFILL's partners/associated partners and key stakeholders. The BGS geophysical tomography team will contribute to the project by developing novel geophysical approaches for non-invasively characterising the structure and composition of waste deposits.

Project goals

RAWFILL aims to provide knowledge and tools to screen LFs and demonstrates under real conditions the evidence-based, standardised methodology to select profitable LFM projects, with the goal of recovering huge amounts of dormant raw materials, energy carriers and land resources.